1 CommentStanford University, in California, recently hosted a super interesting event called “Virtual Currencies: Gold Rush or Fools’ Gold, The Rise of Bitcoin in a Digital Economy” (which you can check here). The debate’s importance was boosted thanks to the presence of a lot of Silicon Valley geeks and investors like Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, for instance.
Like we shown you before, the twins, connected to the beginning of Facebook, have been into Bitcoin for a while and they are not the only ones. However, like most of the tech-savvy people from the technology midst, they have that idea that most people know the basics about every innovation out there, like cryptocurrency.
When asked about the public’s awareness of digital coin, Cameron Winklevoss said: “by now, most people probably know about Bitcoin”. Are you sure, Cameron? Maybe not. To prove this theory, YouGov made a questionnaire, with a nationally representative sample of 1000 United States residents, and the results aren’t the best, as most people still don’t know what Bitcoin is.
When asked “have you ever heard of Bitcoin”, only 30 percent of the participants said ‘yes’. This means that 70 percent of them still doesn’t know Bitcoin or have ever heard about it. Still, it gives us an idea of some facts: men are almost twice as aware of cryptocurrency as women and younger people are more aware than older people. Besides, this awareness is highly correlated with education and income.
For those who claimed they were aware of Bitcoin’s existence, there were more questions. To the question “what do you think Bitcoin is”, the participants had multiple choices and could choose more than one:
- 82 percent said “a virtual currency”
- 35 percent said “an online payment system”
- 25 percent said “a way to transfer money anonymously”
- 9 percent weren’t sure
- 8 percent said “a payment system for hackers”
- 3 percent said “a small coin”
The participants were also asked if they had ever used Bitcoin: 98 percent of them told a big fat ‘no’. Only 2 percent of people aware of cryptocurrency had used Bitcoin so far. And if there was any hope for the majority, it ended when 51 percent claimed they had no intention of using the digital coin in the future.
I don’t see why you connotate this negatively by saying “only 30%” and “half doesnt intend to use it”.
In reality, it’s “Wow, already 30% of the people heard of a currency that only came into existence less than 4 years ago? And almost half of those people are intending to use it? That is great news!”
Not even Facebook spread so quickly.